Ignorance usually excuses from responsibility, unless the person is culpable for the ignorance itself. Since a lot of wrongdoing occurs in ignorance, the question of what makes ignorance culpable is central for a theory of moral responsibility. In this article I examine a prominent answer, which I call the ‘volitionalist tracing account,’ and criticize it on the grounds that it relies on an overly restrictive conception of responsibility‐relevant control. I then propose an alternative, which I call the ‘capacitarian conception of (...) control,’ and on the basis of it I advance an account of culpable ignorance that avoids the skeptical upshots of the volitionalist proposal. If correct, my account establishes three important truths: agents can be directly in control of their ignorance, they can be directly responsible for more than actions and omissions, and their moral obligations extend beyond the performance of intentional actions and omissions. (shrink)

In this paper, we focus on whether and to what extent we judge that people are responsible for the consequences of their forgetfulness. We ran a series of behavioral studies to measure judgments of responsibility for the consequences of forgetfulness. Our results show that we are disposed to hold others responsible for some of their forgetfulness. The level of stress that the forgetful agent is under modulates judgments of responsibility, though the level of care that the agent exhibits toward performing (...) the forgotten action does not. We argue that this result has important implications for a long-running debate about the nature of responsible agency. (shrink)

My primary target in this paper is a puzzle that emerges from the conjunction of several seemingly innocent assumptions in action theory and the metaphysics of moral responsibility. The puzzle I have in mind is this. On one widely held account of moral responsibility, an agent is morally responsible only for those actions or outcomes over which that agent exercises control. Recently, however, some have cited cases where agents appear to be morally responsible without exercising any control. This leads some (...) to abandon the control-based account of responsibility and replace it with an alternative account. It leads others to deny the intuition that agents are responsible in these troublesome cases. After outlining the account of moral responsibility I have in mind, I look at some of the arguments made against the viability of this theory. I show that there are conceptual resources for salvaging the control account, focusing in particular on the nature of vigilance. I also argue that there is empirical data that supports the control account so conceived. (shrink)

I argue that a capacity‐based account of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness is superior to an account based on quality of will. I focus on four types of cases about which the two accounts disagree and show that the capacity‐based view offers a better treatment. As part of my argument, I motivate the distinction between an assessment of a person's moral character, as reflected by her action, and an assessment of her blameworthiness or praiseworthiness for that action.

I consider three challenges to the traditional view according to which moral responsibility involves an epistemic condition in addition to a freedom condition. The first challenge holds that if a person performs an action A freely, then she thereby knows that she is doing A. The epistemic condition is thus built into the freedom condition. The second challenge contends that no epistemic condition is required for moral responsibility, since a person may be blameworthy for an action that she did not (...) know was wrong. The third challenge invokes the quality of will view. On this view, a person is blameworthy for a wrong action just in case the action manifests a bad quality of will. The blameworthy person need not satisfy an additional epistemic condition. I will argue that contrary to appearances, none of these challenges succeeds. Hence, moral responsibility does require a non-superfluous epistemic condition. (shrink)

A plausible view about the epistemic condition of blameworthiness holds the following. Reasonable Expectation (RE): S's state of ignorance excuses iff S could not have been reasonably expected to have corrected or avoided the ignorance. An important, yet underexplored issue for RE concerns cases where an agent had the capacities and opportunities to have corrected or avoided the state of ignorance yet failed to do because of the difficulty involved. When does the fact that it was difficult for the agent (...) to have corrected or avoided the ignorance make an expectation to have done so an unreasonable expectation? Addressing this question is important for understanding what RE implies for a broad range of interesting cases where non-ideal agents out in the real world are ignorant because of commonplace difficulties (e.g., cognitive biases, complexity of large bodies of evidence, and misinformation). Whether commonplace difficulties excuse is an interesting and important topic that a satisfactory account of the epistemic condition needs to address. This paper proposes and defends an irreducibly normative account of when difficulty precludes a reasonable expectation to know better. The paper then shows how this account can be used alongside empirical research to reveal what RE implies for important cases of ignorance had by real non-ideal agents. (shrink)

I first clarify the idea that blameworthiness requires consciousness as the view that one can be blameworthy only for what is a response to a reason of which one is conscious. Next I develop the following argument: blameworthiness requires exercising control in a way distinctive of persons and doing this, in view of what it is to be a person, requires responding to a reason of which one is conscious. Then I defend this argument from an objection inspired by Arpaly (...) and Schroeder according to which responding to moral reasons suffices for exercising control distinctive of persons. (shrink)

Assuming that an agent can be morally responsible for her forgetting to do something, we can use recent psychological research on prospective memory to assess the psychological assumptions made by normative accounts of the moral responsibility for forgetting. Two accounts of moral responsibility (control accounts and valuative accounts) have been prominent in recent debates about the degree to which agents are blameworthy for their unwitting omissions. This paper highlights the psychological assumptions concerning remembering and forgetting that characterise the accounts. The (...) paper then introduces and reviews recent empirical literature on prospective memory. Finally, it uses the literature to assess the various assumptions. One important implication is that a direct capacitarian control account implies implausible assumptions about the psychological capacity for remembering. A second important implication is that an indirect capacitarian control account and a valuative account highlight different but complementary aspects of remembering and forgetting. (shrink)

Given the pervasiveness of habit in human life, the distinctive problems posed by habitual acts for accounts of moral responsibility deserve more attention than they have hitherto received. But whereas it is hard to find a systematic treatment habitual acts within current accounts of moral responsibility, proponents of such accounts have turned their attention to a topic which, I suggest, is a closely related one: unwitting omissions. Habitual acts and unwitting omissions raise similar issues for a theory of responsibility because (...) they likewise invite us to rethink the assumption that moral responsibility requires awareness of the relevant features of one’s conduct. And given the increasing interest in the problem of responsibility for unwitting omissions, it is reasonable to expect that the theoretical moves made in response to this problem might be used to make sense of judgments of responsibility regarding habitual acts. I substantiate these points by inquiring into whether some well-known accounts of unwitting omissions can be used to explain how we can be responsible for things we do out of habit. (shrink)

Midwest Studies In Philosophy, EarlyView.

Peter Graham argues against the prima facie plausible thesis that one can be directly blameworthy only for one’s conduct—that is, only for one’s actions or omissions to act. Because this thesis serves as a premise in a challenging recent argument for the revisionist conclusion that we’re at most rarely directly blameworthy for anything, Graham’s argument holds out a promise of contributing to a defense of a wide range of commonsense ascriptions of blameworthiness. After reconstructing Graham’s argument for the possibility of (...) direct blameworthiness for non-conduct, I develop the following objection to it: in light of a clear counterexample, one of Graham’s two premises must be weakened, which in turn requires that Graham’s other premise be strengthened; unfortunately, the resulting strengthened premise is implausible on balance. (shrink)

Consider cases in which an agent simply doesn.t think to do a certain thing, or doesn't think of a crucial consideration favoring doing a certain thing, or intends to do a certain thing but forgets to do it. In such a case, is the agent able to do the thing that she fails to do? Assume that commonly we all‐in can do things that we do not do. Here I argue that, given this assumption, in the cases under consideration, too, (...) commonly agents all‐in can do the things they fail to do. (shrink)

We propose a new account of collective moral obligation. We argue that several agents have a moral obligation together only if they each have (i) a context-specific capacity to view their situation from the group’s perspective, and (ii) at least a general capacity to deliberate about what they ought to do together. Such an obligation is irreducibly collective, in that it does not imply that the individuals have any obligations to contribute to what is required of the group. We highlight (...) various distinctive features of our account. One such feature is that moral obligations are always relative to an agential perspective. (shrink)

I argue for responsibility internalism. That is, moral responsibility (i.e., accountability, or being apt for praise or blame) depends only on factors internal to agents. Employing this view, I also argue that no one is responsible for what AI does but this isn’t morally problematic in a way that counts against developing or using AI. Responsibility is grounded in three potential conditions: the control (or freedom) condition, the epistemic (or awareness) condition, and the causal responsibility condition (or consequences). I argue (...) that causal responsibility is irrelevant for moral responsibility, and that the control condition and the epistemic condition depend only on factors internal to agents. Moreover, since what AI does is at best a consequence of our actions, and the consequences of our actions are irrelevant to our responsibility, no one is responsible for what AI does. That is, the so-called responsibility gap exits. However, this isn’t morally worrisome for developing or using AI. Firstly, I argue, current AI doesn’t generate a new kind of concern about responsibility that the older technologies don’t. Then, I argue that responsibility gap is not worrisome because neither responsibility gap, nor my argument for its existence, entails that no one can be justly punished, held accountable, or incurs duties in reparations when AI causes a harm. (shrink)

An encyclopedia article on the epistemic or knowledge condition for moral responsibility, written for the SEP.

Many philosophers accept derivative blameworthiness for ignorant conduct – the idea that the blameworthiness for one’s ignorance can ‘transfer’ to blameworthiness for one’s subsequent ignorant conduct. In this chapter we ask the question what it actually means that blameworthiness would transfer, and explore four distinct views and their merits. On views (I) and (II), one’s overall degree of blameworthiness is determined by factors relevant to one’s ignorance and/or one’s subsequent conduct, and transfer only involves an increase in scope. On views (...) (III) and (IV), one’s overall degree of blameworthiness is determined by factors relevant to one’s ignorance as well as one’s subsequent conduct, and transfer might not only entail an increase in scope, but also in degree. (shrink)

The actualism/possibilism debate in ethics concerns the relationship between an agent’s free actions and her moral obligations. The actualist affirms, while the possibilist denies, that facts about what agents would freely do in certain circumstances partly determines that agent’s moral obligations. This paper assesses the plausibility of actualism and possibilism in light of desiderata about accounts of blameworthiness. This paper first argues that actualism cannot straightforwardly accommodate certain very plausible desiderata before offering a few independent solutions on behalf of the (...) actualist. This paper then argues that, contrary to initial appearances, possibilism is subject to its own comparably troubling blameworthiness problem. (shrink)